In The Northwest: New Bishop Nedi Rivera will not lack for challenge

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, January 23, 2005

As an Oakland Athletics season ticket holder in the Bay Area, Episcopal Bishop Nedi Rivera came to know an underbudgeted team whose canny ability to spot fresh talent yielded trips to the playoffs.

"Billy Beane sees people's potential; that's what makes it work. It doesn't have to be the most expensive pitcher," said Rivera, who was consecrated on Saturday as bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Olympia.

As with the A's general manager, Rivera will need to make the most out of the meager.

Taking her post under Bishop Vincent Warner, the 58-year-old Rivera is charged with faith formation and evangelism in a troubled diocese of a deeply divided church.

"The real danger for her ministry is that there is already an 'Our Savior Nedi Rivera' complex in the diocese: I've already heard folk say that the answer to some problems is 'Nedi will be here soon,' " one prominent Episcopal pastor privately mused.

The Diocese of Olympia covers Western Washington from Canada to the Columbia.

As the region gained 2 million new residents in the past 25 years, its population of Episcopalians -- now about 33,000 -- has stagnated and even slightly declined.

More than 30 congregations are behind in diocesan assessments. Two parishes left the Episcopal Church altogether after elevation of a non-celibate gay, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Even the bishop's annual golf tournament was canceled for want of players.

The ebullient Rivera is well aware of her church's problems.

"We have not taken seriously what we have to offer the world," she said in an interview. "It doesn't just happen that 2 million people move into a state, buy a house and then ask, 'Where do I go to church?'

"It is far more an individual searching. 'I have a hole in my life. I have a need.' We can answer with the good news of Jesus Christ, by being deeply involved in justice, and by finding a way to make a difference in people's lives."

And, reflecting on battles over same-sex marriage and gay ordinations, Rivera added, "We've been so busy fighting each other that nobody wants to join us."

What's been experienced in the Episcopal Church has happened to other "mainline" Protestant churches.

Mainline churches in the Puget Sound area used to click together like the Oakland A's. In the least-"churched" corner of the United States, church leaders scrambled to influence local life.

They were pioneers in ecumenical dialogue and interracial cooperation. They campaigned to remove racial and economic barriers to home ownership.

As the Seattle area lost more than 70,000 jobs in the 1969-70 "Boeing crash," churches organized Neighbors in Need to feed the newly jobless. Corporate heads turned at the then all-male Rainier Club as food bank organizer Peggy Maze, a Catholic, appeared at lunch to dine with Episcopal Bishop Ivol Curtis.

Since then, sadly, mainline Christianity has seemed to lose itself in side channels.

The Church Council of Greater Seattle grew ever more radical in foreign-policy stands, blaming the United States and bashing Israel and celebrating the virtues of Castro's Cuba.

"No question about it: The council's stand on Israel caused a major rift with mainstream Jewish organizations," said Rick Harkavy, until recently head of the Seattle office of the American Jewish Committee.

Episcopal leaders have seemed bent on indulging every excess of political correctness.

In its 2001 convention, Warner urged the diocese to commit itself against racism and "white privilege." An amendment deleting the word "white" narrowly carried -- bringing a hail of abuse down on those who dared argue that privilege is more than a function of race.

In his 2004 Easter message, Warner said: "Growth in the future is going to be based on moving away from a racist hierarchical church system to a church with all cultures, all ethnicity and what I like to identify as a 'wholearchy' rather than the old system of hierarchy known as patriarchy."

Half-baked rhetoric has made few converts while disturbing many traditional believers. Also, the local diocese has taken on an insular, Seattle-centric character.

Last fall's diocesan convention elected eight delegates to the next Episcopal General Convention: All eight hail from King County, with six from Seattle and four from a single parish -- St. Mark's Cathedral.

Rivera will begin her work here by get- ting out of town to Vancouver and Washou- gal. Her husband, Robert Moore, a recently retired priest, will join her in her travels.

Rivera spent 10 years of her ministry in California's Diocese of El Camino Real, renowned for deep divisions and a revolving door of bishops.

She learned from the experience. "I'm a fairly decent politician," Rivera joked. "I had a bishop once who wasn't a good politician, and it was disastrous for his episcopacy."

What makes a skilled ecclesiastical politician?

It began at home: Nedi is the daughter of Bishop Victor Manuel Rivera, long a prominent foe of ordaining women. Movingly, at her consecration, the elder Rivera bestowed his bishop's cope -- a long semicircular cloak -- on his daughter.

Nedi Rivera also sees the need to make criticism, and to take criticism, and to be changed by it. As rector at St. Aidan Episcopal Church in San Francisco, she experienced the Seattle-style way of doing things. Planning to hire a seminarian, Rivera was cautioned by parish leaders. "You don't make a decision like that by yourself, I was told," she recalled. "I began to learn that people had to be consulted."

A lot of work is going to fall on Nedi Rivera's shoulders.

She is charged with making the Episcopal Church a more diverse, multicultural, "inclusive" outfit -- at a time when traditionalists fear they will be included right out the door.

Along with Sandy Brown -- new executive director at the Church Council -- she's seen as possibly bringing a hoped-for breath of fresh air to stagnant mainline churches.